First, you must accept becoming a life-long learner,

You'll learn skills, which you can apply to your daily tasks and agendas, facts and information about your passions & goals, external factors, and of course lessons on how to improve yourself stress free!

But while you handle the daily responsibilities of life and carve new pathways in your brain to solve the problems associated with them, you may find it difficult to learn new things or even find it difficult to make room for new knowledge.

1. Talk to someone who learned it, and applied it.

Think of something challenging you learned how to do, possibly on your own. Reflect from your past life experiences. You probably made a lot of mistakes along the way, and in retrospect, you probably know some shortcuts and tips that could have saved you a lot of time. This is almost universally true on all levels, even the most technical and complex subjects have “a code” that can be taught by anyone familiar enough with the material.

Your first step, then, is to seek out and talk to people who have already learned what you're learning and ask them for advice, you'll probably get it, what's the worst thing that could happen? Don’t allow paper tigers to build mental barriers.

2. Dive in head first! Immerse yourself in the learning process.

By now, you should know that multitasking is bad. When your brain tries to do multiple things at once (consciously), it usually ends up failing at everything. If you're going to learn something, you need to immerse yourself in the learning process, really soak in everything about that market. If you're taking lessons, or are reading a book, or are watching online videos, isolate yourself and focus only on that task.

Turn off notifications, and don't let yourself get distracted. You'll learn much faster and easier this way.

3. Quality Control - Learn in short bursts.

The best way to study is to focus your efforts in short bursts, as in 20-to-30 minute chunks. Any longer than that, and your attention will start to dwindle. Try to schedule your learning sessions in these short blocks, rather than aiming for occasional marathon sessions. Attach a reward for the first half of the day, our brains love challenges.

4. Speak your mind on paper! Write everything down.

For multiple reasons, START JOURNALING we tend to remember things better once we've written them down. It could be because we're forced to repeat what we're hearing and thinking in a written format, or it could be a psychological "trick" that teaches our mind that this particular information is worth remembering. Either way, it works. Whether you're taking notes or committing a lesson to memory, write everything down that you can.

5. Focus on the fundamentals. They’ll fight for you!

When learning something new, it's helpful to ignore the “smoke and mirrors” and focus purely on the most important elements of your subject. Remove your emotions when generating solutions. Crawl, walk , run. Just like when the printer used to stop working, we relied on the fundamentals. Was there paper? Is the ink low? Did I click on the right printer from the computer? 

Or just like in the military, when going to the shooting range. I used to teach the marksmanship fundamentals. Control your breathing, focus on your sight picture, don’t squeeze the trigger, is there a round in the chamber, what happens if your weapon jams?, etc..

Learn the habits associated with whatever it is you are aiming for, or reaching for. 

6. Why Wait!? Find a way right now.

Our minds learn best when we're met with immediate feedback. If something's right, we need to feel rewarded. If something's wrong, we should be corrected immediately; this also prevents us from practicing or rehearsing the wrong things. Your system of feedback may depend on an outside party, or semi-constant check-ins with a source (e.g., a book) to ensure you're getting things right. Now its time to compare and contrast and one of quickest ways is through self reflection through journaling. Try my free mindshifting courses.

7. Consistently Practice consistently.

There's a common belief that it takes about 10,000 hours of practice for anyone to master anything -- perpetuated by the book Outliers, by Malcolm Gladwell. There's certainly a wealth of evidence that practice and repetition are your best tools for learning. Our entire lives are based on habits, aka your “habitual reality” everything we do is a habit or micro step. 

This is the way our brains are wired; the more we do something, the more important it becomes, and the more entrenched it becomes in our memory.

8. Learn, Practice, Preach - Explain what you've learned to someone else.

If you want to test your knowledge on a subject, try explaining it to someone else. This forces you to reword your new knowledge, and revisit it from the ground up. It's a perfect test to see if you've truly internalized something -- or if you've just been going through the motions of learning. Its a bad habit we have to shake off from High School. They taught us how to memorize, instead of teaching of the how/s & why’s of how they compliment real world applications. 

9. Emotional Intelligence - Control Emotion.

You might no longer see the value in your subject matter or you might be feeling burned out; in any case, you'll lose momentum, stop studying and fail to master your skill or knowledge.

You can avoid this type of complacency by making your studying habits continually rewarding; set up milestones along the way, and experiment with new learning tactics to keep from getting bored. Keep your brain guessing your next moves. It’s constantly trying to preserve energy, mental and physical. We are only allocated a certain amount of mental, physical energy on any given day. Learning new things while maintaining your role as a leader, visionary and committed worker can be challenging, but it certainly isn't impossible. With these strategies, you'll be able to learn faster and more efficiently than ever before.